


Alternate Arrangements

by bzarcher



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Developing Friendships, Gen, Slipstream - Freeform, what if...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 05:44:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8653099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher
Summary: Flight Lieutenant Lena "Tracer" Oxton, RAF was seconded to Overwatch to serve as the chief test pilot of the Slipstream project...but sometimes plans change.





	1. Chapter 1

Lena wasn’t sure what was more offensive – the phone ringing at 5:45 in the bloody morning, or that it was doing so on her day off.

Growling as she slowly extracted herself from the tangle of blankets and sheets she’d wrapped around her in the middle of the night, she fumbled twice before reaching the offending piece of technology and tapped the ‘ACCEPT CALL’ button without bothering to check the number.

“Oxton. What the bloody fuck is going on and why are you calling me this fucking early?”

A man’s dry chuckle was her answer, and she suddenly sat bolt upright as adrenaline slammed through her veins. She’d just done a spectacular job of roasting a superior officer, but apparently Strike-Commander Morrison wasn’t holding it against her.

_-Good morning, ‘Leftenant’ Oxton. Sorry to wake you, but we need you in immediately._

She couldn’t help but reflexively run the fingers of her free hand through her hair as she tried to process that information. “Oh-kay…ah, sir. But I thought we weren’t taking the bird up until Thursday.”

Morrison paused, and when he spoke again, he almost seemed amused, which was seriously odd.

– _Well, that’s part of what we need to discuss._

Lena couldn’t help but stare at her phone in confusion, then shook her head. She wouldn’t get any answers sitting in her bed in the Visiting Officer’s Quarters anyway. “Right, sir. Be there in ten.”

- _You can have twenty. Meet me at the_ Slipstream _project hangar. Morrison out._

As the line went dead, Lena put her phone on the nightstand and then stretched to pop her shoulders. “Well, I have no idea what the hell this is about, but I guess I’d better get dressed…”

* * *

 

Eighteen minutes and a fast shower later, Lena walked to the door of the _Slipstream_ hangar wearing her olive drab type 14s and the vintage leather Shearing jacket she’d hunted down on the day she officially earned the right to call herself a Pilot Officer in the RAF.

Commander Morrison was standing there in his casual dress uniform, while the short Swedish engineer who had been consulting on the project groused about something as she walked up.

“-shouldn’t have been _possible_ , Jack! The whole idea is ridiculous!”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Torb. From what Winston’s told me it did _exactly_ what it’s supposed to do.”

 _Well,_ Lena mused, _that doesn’t sound good_. Stopping just short of the pair, she came to attention and offered a painfully correct salute, as if to make up for her earlier whoops. “Flight Lieutenant Oxton, reporting as ordered, sir!”

Morrison grinned – yeah, she was off the hook – then returned the salute with crisp precision. “Thank you for coming in so quickly, Lieutenant. No need to be too formal right now, though.”

Lena nodded, slipping into a more relaxed posture. “Can I ask what’s going on, then?”

Before Torbjörn could wind himself up again, Morrison put a hand on the shorter man’s shoulder, then gestured to the hangar’s human sized door. “I think it’s easier if we just show you.”

As they passed into the combination hangar bay and research facility, Lena could immediately see what the problem was – or rather, what it _wasn’t._

Where there should have been an experimental fighter, painted in electric blue and yellow accents, there was a sort of swirling bright blue _something_ that she couldn’t exactly describe. It looked like a special effect from a Doctor Who episode, but there was a distinct chill in the air as she approached where the aircraft had been sitting, her mouth gaping in shock.

“As you can see,” Morrison explained dryly, “you’re _not_ taking the prototype up this week.”

“What in the _hell_?” Lena turned, still a bit stunned. “What is _that_? Where’s _my plane_? Who _did_ this?”

“Ah.” A new voice, deep and resonant, came from the lab area, and a moment later the project’s chief scientist came loping around a stack of equipment crates. “Well, if you want to be technical we don’t _know_ what it is, or where the plane went, but you could say that it was my fault.”

Lena turned, eyebrows raising at the gorilla in a lab coat. “All right, big guy. Mind explaining that?”

Winston cleared his throat before gesturing to the still swirling mass of energy. “I was running a full diagnostic bench test on the _Slipstream_ ’s teleportation matrix as part of preparing for the planned jump tests this week. When we brought the matrix up to one hundred percent the system suffered what I can only call a catastrophic failure, and that…disturbance…is what’s left.”

Lena turned to stare at the crackling vortex for a long moment before she could speak again. “Well, I’m pretty happy it happened here and not when I was sitting in the bloody thing at 15,000 feet.”

“I quite agree,” Winston’s voice rang with relief as he gestured at the space where the aircraft had been, “As it is, we’ll be doing quite a bit of study to try to figure out what, exactly, happened, and what that is.”

“Right…” Lena paused, then looked back to where Morrison was standing, arms crossed. “But what does that mean for me, exactly?”

Morrison frowned. “Not sure what you mean by that, Lieutenant.”

Lena sighed. Oh, god. It was going to be like that, huh? “Well…I was technically seconded to Overwatch for purposes of being chief test pilot for this project. I mean…I was really looking forward to being part of things here, but…well, with no plane, does that mean I need to be packing my bags?”

“Flight Lieutenant Oxton,” Morrison straightened up, uncrossing his arms, and something crackling in his voice made Lena instinctively snap back to attention. “Since coming to Overwatch six months ago, you’ve consistently aced every simulator run, recorded the highest possible score on our pistol course, and broken your own records for the fastest sprint times on our track and obstacle course – twice. You’ve placed at the top of every written evaluation we’ve given, and you’ve proven that you’re smart, adaptable, and committed to everything this organization stands for.”

Then, like a sun rising, the commander smiled, his voice filling with warmth. “So if you think I am going to send you back to Boscombe Down after they were dumb enough to let us steal you, Lena, you had better think again.”

Lena's mouth turned up into a wide smile as she saluted. “Right, sir! Won’t ask again, sir!”

“Good,” Morrison nodded, then tilted his head slightly over to where Winston had produced some kind of instrument from his lab coat to scan over the hangar floor, “We’ll have to discuss exactly where you fit in – flying one of the dropships is a waste of your talents, and we don’t currently have our own close air support assets. That might be the eventual plan, but for now – give Winston a hand with his research and we’ll keep it classified under the original project until I have everything sorted out.”

“I can do that,” she declared, turning to face the gorilla, "just tell me where you'd like me to start."

 _After all_ , Lena decided instantly, _there’s more than one way to be a hero._


	2. Chapter 2

Two months into the _Slipstream_ investigation, Lena’s opinion on what they had found about the root cause of the fighter’s disappearance could be summed up as “the square root of bugger all.”

To make matters worse (or perhaps better, Winston hadn’t quite come to a conclusion on that, either), the ‘rift’ which had existed for the first few weeks after the incident had disappeared almost as suddenly has it arrived, leaving Overwatch with an empty hangar as the only evidence of six months of preparation for flight trials and more than five years of development work.

Still, it had been interesting. With her experience at Empire, Lena had a strong education in Aeronautical Engineering and a decent mechanical engineering background, but the teleporting fighter had required her to take on enough advanced physics that she felt like she could teach a pretty decent entry Uni course if asked.

Winston’s investigation had been like a graduate level course, and though she couldn’t follow half of what the scientist was trying to look for, Lena did feel like she had a grasp of _how_ he was looking for it, which was a decent accomplishment in its own right.

Getting a grasp of _Winston_ , on the other hand, was the real challenge.

She’d worked with him off and on during preparations for the flight, but most of her day to day work had been with Captain Amari and the tactical personnel, doing simulator runs and discussing potential mission profiles. When the scientist had attended sessions, she’d noticed he tended to be on the quiet side, but had originally put it down to not wanting to freak out their borrowed pilot.

The more she’d worked alongside him, Lena had come to the realization it was because Winston was almost completely isolated outside of his work, and that wouldn’t do _at all._

She’d decided to take a shot at changing things after the second week of their investigation, carefully keeping her voice light the following Friday afternoon. “Got any weekend plans, luv?”

Winston, hunched over a set of charts, made a vague grunt of acknowledgement. That wasn’t entirely unexpected, but Lena was nothing if not persistent.

“Winston? _Wiiiiinston_? Hullo?”

“Mm?” The gorilla finally seemed to realize that he was being addressed and straightened up, blinking a few times under his glasses. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”

“I asked if you had any plans for the weekend? It’s Friday, luv.” Lena leaned against table Winston’s papers had been spread across, her amber lensed glasses pushed up on her forehead. “You’re not planning to work straight through, are you?”

Winston shuffled slightly, the tails of the massive lab coat he had stretched over his frame swishing back and forth. “Well…I suppose not. I wouldn’t really say I have plans, though. I usually just work on some of my personal projects in my lab.”

Lena frowned. “That doesn’t really sound like having much fun.”

“Well,” the scientist rubbed the back of his head, looking away, “I guess it depends on what I’m working on…”

Lena couldn’t help but wince. “Don’t you have friends to go out with? Shows you like? Things you do for _you_ , big guy?”

Winston shrugged. “Angela drops by sometimes. We talk about her research, or she brings me new diet supplements to try.”

“Tell you what – I’ll come over tonight with some takeaway and a couple of movies. You’ve got a TV, right?”

“I…yes, I suppose I do. But are you really sure you want to –“

Lena didn’t let him finish that thought. “Brilliant! Do you like Indian?”

“I…don’t actually know,” Winston admitted thoughtfully, “I can’t say that I’ve ever eaten it.”

Lena considered that, then gave a firm nod. “OK. You need a vegetarian meal, right?”

“Please.”

“Right! I’ll bring a few different dishes, then, and you can see what you like!”

Winston blinked. “I…you don’t need to go to a lot of trouble, Lena.”

“No trouble at all,” Lena assured him gently. “none. Promise!”

“Well…all right, then.” Winston’s smile was a bit more enthusiastic now, and Lena felt an overwhelming urge to give him a hug, but she wasn’t quite sure he was ready for that, yet. “Where’s your flat?”

Winston looked as if she’d just spoken Esperanto, his eyes almost completely crossed in confusion. “…my what?”

Lena giggled. “Apartment? Where you live!”

“Ah.” Winston seemed to make a mental note before answering the question. “My lab is at the base of the Cliffside on the Western end of the Watchpoint.”

“…you live in your lab?”

“It’s not so bad,” Winston reassured her with a wave, “It’s very well set up for what I need.”

Lena couldn’t keep the skepticism from her voice. “You say so, luv. I’ll drop by around seven?”

“That would be fine.”

* * *

_Oh god,_ Lena thought as she entered Winston’s cavernous lab with two bags of takeaway in one hand, _really? They let him live like this?_

The lab had plenty of up to date equipment, she would admit, but the ‘living’ space seemed to involve a handful of large tires, including one hung up as a swing, an industrial looking sink, what appeared to be a bathroom and closet at one end…and a bare mattress resting along the far wall. If this was ‘very well set up’, she would hate seeing what Winston considered uninhabitable.

Winston, for his part, didn’t seem that bothered, but Lena couldn’t help but have flashbacks to exhibits she'd seen as a young girl at the zoo, and the more she thought about it, the more it bothered her. About the only indication of anything beyond the bare minimum of furnishings she could see were a few photographs along the edge of one of the desks – presumably the big guy’s main workstation.

Well, that wouldn’t do at all.

_Dinner and a movie first_ , Lena decided, _try to talk him around on pillows, rugs, and maybe some REALLY heavy duty IKEA stuff second._

Winston, completely unaware of Lena’s internal monologue, just lead her into the main ‘work’ area of his lab, dragging over a wheeled steel cart to serve as an impromptu table. “I’m afraid I don’t have a proper dining room table. I, ah, usually just eat at my desk.”

Lena smiled as she began to unpack the bags. “I’ve eaten on worse! At least this is _clean_. I could tell you stories about a few of my ex-girlfriends…”

Winston chuckled, though he still seemed a bit nervous. “Well, I do have to meet safety standards here.”

Lena laughed, then grabbed a plastic fork so she could point out each item as she named them.

“So, what we have here is some veggie pakora – basically a few different veg battered and fried up. The bread here is naan, it’s usually eaten on the side. The orange and yellow stuff is ginger paneer – it’s cheese fried up with ginger, onions, and peppers. The brown and creamy stuff is korma, it’s ground nuts and cream and veggies with spices. The greens are saag choley, that’s spinach with chickpeas, and rice to go with it all!”

Winston took a deep snuffling sniff, then hummed thoughtfully. “It does smell very good. You said the…korma…has nuts in it?”

“Cashews, yeah.” Lena spooned a bit of rice onto a paper plate, then put a bit of korma on as well before handing it over. The disposable fork seemed almost comically small in his hand, but he handled it deftly, putting together a bite of the korma and rice before chewing on it experimentally.

Lena assembled a plate for herself, crunching down on a couple of pakora to give Winston a chance to figure out what he thought of the food, and couldn’t help but feel a surge of delight when he began to spoon more of the korma and some of the saag onto his plate.

“That’s not bad! I’m not really used to a lot of cooked food, honestly. I usually eat…well, I’m supposed to eat mostly raw vegetables.”

Lena couldn’t help but grin. “So what do you actually eat, then?”

Winston sighed, his voice dripping with guilt. “Peanut butter.”

“Ohhhh, no wonder Doc is after you about the diet, then!”

Winston gave the pilot a half-hearted glare over his glasses. “Please don’t start.”

Lena reached out to pat one furry arm. “No worries, honestly! I’m pretty helpless in the kitchen myself.” Pulling the thumb drive from the pocket of her jeans, she held it up like a priceless artifact. “So – I brought some Bond movies, _Top Gun_ , and _Planet of the Apes_ …”

Winston’s face fell. “Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me.”

“Only  'bout the last one,” Lena reassured him with a wink, “want me to plug this in and we can put something on while we eat?”

Winston finally smiled. “All right. You can plug into the main display over there. I’ll let you pick what we start with.”

“ _Goldfinger_ it is, then!”

* * *

Since that night, Lena had slowly but surely helped add a few comforts to Winston’s lab, encouraged him to get out and socialize a bit more (including a memorable appearance at the ‘Dubious Talent Karaoke Night’), and finally gotten him to admit that the original  _Planet of the Apes_ was a fairly entertaining movie.

She’d learned a few more serious things – Winston had finally explained who the spectacled man holding an obvious (and adorable) Baby Winston in the photo on his desk was, and how he’d found his way to Overwatch. She’d seen that he did have a few other genuine friendships, and had been delighted that Doc Ziegler in particular seemed to appreciate how Lena was encouraging the big guy to open up more.

Lena still wasn’t quite sure what else she’d end up doing in Overwatch – Commander Morrison had yet to deliver on much beyond her current ‘unofficially official’ duties of doing fetch and carry for Winston, really. But if the worst that happened was being grounded for a couple more months before they found her a kite to fly, well, at least she was coming out of it with more people calling her Tracer or Lena instead of "Lt. Oxton", and some more friendships in the bargain.


	3. Chapter 3

Since Lena Oxton had unexpectedly lost her original purpose for serving as part of Overwatch, it made a certain sense that she’d find a new one just as unexpectedly.

“Lena,” Winston asked as she stood in his laboratory at Watchpoint: Gibraltar, “can you go into the storage locker and grab the portable spectrometer?”

“Sure, luv!” She paused halfway across the floor, turning back to look at the massive scientist. “What’s that when it’s at home, then?”

Winston chuckled, pointing at the pair of storage lockers at the back of the lab. “White tube with a forty-five-degree bend in it, metallic cap on the end, black polymer grips.”

“Right!” Lena opened the locker on the left, not realizing Winston had pointed to the one on the right, then paused, her jaw dropping. “What the _hell_ is that?”

“Ah?” Winston turned, then laughed in surprise. “Oh! That’s a space suit, Lena! My space suit, to be specific. I suppose you might call it space armor.”

Lena’s brows rose as she examined the heavy looking plating. “Cor. You wore that?”

The gorilla chuckled as he ambled over, running a hand over the white polymer breastplate. “The whole idea of the Horizon project was to send us out in space capsules, remember? I wasn’t going to wear a lab coat. Remember, I had to calculate my own orbit and entry vector when I escaped to Earth. If things had gone wrong, wearing my suit wasn’t going to give me much of a chance if something went wrong, but a four percent chance of survival is better than none.”

Lena couldn’t help but laugh. “Careful, luv, or you’ll start sounding like a test pilot.”

Winston shook his head fondly. “First you’d need to find a cockpit that I could squeeze into, I think.”

“So,” Lena said slowly as she examined the suit, “what are those bits hanging off the back?”

“Vernier thrusters,” Winston explained, “to enable change of direction and velocity in zero gravity. I tuned mine so that I could also use them for short burst hops in standard gravity as well.”

Lena’s eyes went wide. “What, like flying?”

“More like an assisted leap,” the scientist corrected, “to make it easy to clear distances or to reach someone in an emergency.”

“Huh.” Lena looked over, a grin stealing across her face. “So, speaking of squeezing in…think it still fits?” 

Winston rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well…it’s been a few years, but I suppose I could try.”

It did take a bit of work to help Winston get into his suit (“Maybe – _argh –_ Angela did have a point about my – _oof!_ – diet…”), but once he did, he treated Lena to a demonstration of how it worked, what it allowed him to do, and most importantly the jump pack’s maneuvering abilities. They spent the better part of an afternoon out in the Watchpoint’s outdoor rec area, and by the time Winston had finished, Lena had an idea forming in her mind, looking over the suit with an aeronautical engineer’s eye.

“So, I hate to be rude,” Lena admitted to Winston as she helped him to doff the suit, “but how much do you think you weigh in this whole thing?”

“Oh,” Winston considered that for a moment, “probably somewhere around two hundred and twenty kilograms? Maybe closer to two seventy-five if I’m carrying a full fuel and equipment load.”

“So what happens,” Lena asked with increasing interest, “if you took thrust systems that powerful and set them up for someone who weighed eighty-four kilos?”

Winston looked at her with confusion for a moment, then suddenly blinked as he understood what she was asking. “I’ve no idea…but if you think we can sell Commander Morrison on it, we might be able to find out.”

They spent the better part of a week on a project proposal, including some preliminary ideas for what a shrunk down, streamlined suit might look like, and Lena was thrilled as the ideas they tossed around began to form a complete picture.

“Obviously you don’t need the kind of environmental support required for space, but being able to seal the suit would be useful.”

“Oh, sure, especially if using it to pull people out of a wreck or a fire.”

“So you’re thinking as much of being able to use the suit for rescue purposes as combat?”

“Of course! More to being a hero than knowing how to shoot a gun, luv.”

“…I suppose there is.”

* * *

When they arrived at one of the conference rooms that had been set up to accommodate some of the organization’s larger members (Winston _could_ fit through a conventional door, but it looked like a bit of a magic trick every time Lena saw it, and he certainly wasn’t comfortable in a regular chair), Morrison was waiting for them, a look of interest in his eyes.

“Lena,” he nodded to each of them as they came in, “Winston. You’ve got something you wanted to show me?”

“We do,” Winston agreed, handing the Strike-Commander a bright blue binder with the words Project LORICA Proposal printed on the cover in white, “thanks to some ideas Lena brought to me while assisting in my lab.”

Morrison pursed his lips. “Another development project? I have to point out the last one didn’t exactly end well – even if it did bring a very promising agent into our ranks.”

Lena smiled at the praise, then sat down facing where the commander had taken a seat. “This is a little more conventional – and using a lot of proven technologies. It’s how we want to put them together that’s novel.”

“Hmm.” Morrison looked at them thoughtfully, then began to leaf through the proposal document. “Is this why I’ve seen you bouncing around in your old suit a few times lately, Winston?”

“That’s what started it,” the scientist admitted, “Lena found it and asked for a demonstration, and let’s say one thing lead to another.”

Morrison considered that for a moment, then paused as he looked at the first rough blueprint. “Flying armor? Angela may get jealous.”

Lena grinned. “I was thinking she might be asked to consult. I know her Valkyrie system works on different principles, but there’s a lot of ways the two could complement each other in the field – assuming we get it working.”

“I can see that.” Morrison drummed his fingers on the table, then nodded. “Technically your involvement with Overwatch is still tied to the _Slipstream_ project, Oxton – we’re working on the red tape with the RAF, but you know how that goes. Putting you on something different could cause an issue.”

Lena deflated slightly, her shoulders dropping. “Oh, bugger, I hadn’t considered…”

“Fortunately,” Morrison continued on, “I have a great deal of leeway in how I allocate Overwatch project budgets. So if we were to put the initial development work under the _Slipstream_ budget – call it development of technologies related to the original design in the wake of the accident – I don’t see any reason why the RAF would be able to object.”

Lena looked up, her voice filled with excitement. “So that’s a yes?”

Morrison smiled at the pair. “That’s a yes. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the Egyptian army and Helix Security have been talking about creating some kind of piloted flying armor for some time. Haven’t been able to crack it. If the two of you can come up with a workable prototype, we might be able to offer them some technical assistance in exchange for other considerations.”

“I hadn’t heard that, no.” Winston sighed as he removed his glasses, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “ _Politics._ ”

Lena put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, and Morrison offered a sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid it’s part of the job that I have to consider – especially lately. But I like what you’ve come up with here – something that’s as useful in an emergency or disaster relief as it is in a military application. I’m looking forward to seeing the results.”


End file.
